


Through the Eyes of my Kid

by TrinNeedsTWS



Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: Gen, Multi, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-13
Updated: 2019-04-13
Packaged: 2020-01-12 11:56:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18446066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrinNeedsTWS/pseuds/TrinNeedsTWS
Summary: Basically just a small part of what would happen (in my mind) if Alice had to go back and live in Purgatory with the others--including her mother.





	Through the Eyes of my Kid

**Author's Note:**

> Uh, so this isn't the first fic I've written but it is the first one I've posted...kinda nervous actually. Anyway, I just wanted to put it somewhere other than my laptop, so here it is.

Scrutinising the cracks in the pavement of our corner, I stuffed another spoonful of fried rice in my mouth, trying and failing to block out Logan’s voice.  
“Listen, okay, what if I just handed in a blank paper, would they just fail me or make me do it again?” he said, eyes vaguely following the motion of my spoon.  
“You might get a detention. And then they’d make you do it again. Because they’re hardasses like that,” I reasoned.  
Groaning melodramatically, he slumped against the bench I was sitting on.  
“That’s bullshit man. It’s my choice to throw my future away,” Logan whined.  
I shrugged, snapping the lid back on my container and stowing it in my bag.  
“There is a foolproof solution to this,” I began.  
“What?” he asked, hopeful eyes flickering open.  
“Studying.”  
“Shit, Ally,” he laughed, affectionately patting the section of my calf he could reach.  
Shrugging, I leaned against the wall.  
When the bell rang, I dragged him to his feet and then dragged him to our next class.  
We had a test, and we both knew he would only just scrape a pass no matter what he did, but he didn’t care and after a while, I had stopped trying to make him.  
My day would have been awful enough just with that exam, but halfway through it, one of the secretaries knocked on the door, saying my name.  
Mrs Ness objected, saying we had a test worth a lot of our grade, but the secretary shook her head, insisting with her eyes full of some emotion I didn’t want to name. Reluctantly, I packed my things away and gave my half-finished test to my teacher, who promised I could finish it later. Lucky me.  
Slinging my bag on my back, I followed the secretary—I think her name was Miss Hale—to the office, keeping my expression smooth despite the tremors in my hands.  
Standing next to the desk of the office was a cop.  
“What is this?” I said, refusing to enter, halting just inside the doorway.  
“Are you Alice Gibson?” the cop asked, nervously gripping his belt.  
“One and only,” I replied, purposefully gentling my tone, though it should have been obvious who I was.  
“I’m—Officer Hartnett. I’m sorry,” he started.  
And I almost held up my hand to stop him, because nothing good ever came after an apology. Especially not for me, and especially not from a cop.  
“It’s—your aunt. There was a drunk driver. She passed away in the ambulance,” he said.  
His hazel eyes were so pitying. And I hated it—ever since I had first told Logan that I had never spoken to my mother, or my father, that I barely knew them except for a rare story told after long hours of Gus’s drinking, I told myself I would never give anyone a reason to look at me like that again—but here was this young, poor police officer, sent to tell a teenager their guardian had died.  
It was like what he said wasn’t quite real, like maybe I could laugh and my friends would jump out from behind the counter and shout ‘fucking got you.’  
I waited. They didn’t.  
“You’re going to have to come with me,” the cop said, after I didn’t reply.  
Miss Hale and the other secretary’s gazes bounced from him to me.  
Slowly, I nodded. “Okay. Why?”  
“We need to figure out who’s going to take care of you, now,” he said, gently.  
It still wasn’t settling. I knew it, I knew Gus was dead. I knew she was. But I couldn’t understand it, couldn’t process it. But it did make sense they’d struggle to find someone who could take me in.  
I nodded again, and he turned, to walk out the door.  
“You got everything?” Miss Hale asked.  
I glanced at my bag, before following the cop out the door, not deigning to reply. My mouth felt too heavy to open.  
I climbed into the cop’s cruiser and settled my bag around my feet. I didn’t feel anything. Which was odd, but I didn’t want to lose it in front of this guy anyway.  
The drive was short, but I didn’t remember it. I didn’t recognise the street we had ended up on either.  
Officer Hartnett lead me in and sat me down at what I assumed was his desk, and he disappeared, telling me to sit tight. How cliché.  
When he returned, he was holding a file, and he opened it as he sat down in his wheelie chair.  
“Now, I’m going to need you to be honest with me about everything, because there’s only so much I can do if you aren’t. I don’t want you to end up in foster care or anything like that.”  
Foster care. The words clanged through me, and I decided I would tell him whatever he wanted to know.  
“So, you were being taken care of by your aunt, yes?” Officer Hartnett asked.  
“Great aunt, yeah.”  
“So, do you have parents? Are they still around?”  
“I—uh. I do. My last name isn’t actually Gibson, I just borrowed it.”  
“So they’re still alive. Do you know their names?” Officer Hartnett asked.  
At least his expression was serious and contemplative as he decided what to do with me. That was better than pity.  
Gus had never told me my father’s name. Said if I wanted to know I would go find my mother and ask her. Maybe she didn’t even know, thinking back on it.  
Though, I did know my mother’s.  
“Wynonna Earp.”  
Frowning, the cop typed it into his monitor. To my surprise, a list of files popped up, all stamped with my mother’s name. How’d she get in the system? Gus had never mentioned her niece had a criminal record.  
“You’re sure that’s her?” Hartnett asked me, as he clicked on a mugshot.  
I only vaguely knew her face because it looked like my own, but I knew it was her. How many people were saddled with the name Earp, with the word Wynonna in front of it?  
At my nod, he sighed. “Alright. Says here her known address is all the way across the country.”  
“That’s right.”  
“Well, even if we call her, it’ll take a couple days for her to get up here. Do you have any friends you could stay with?”  
I gave him a slow nod. Logan’s mum loved me, she would take care of me until then.  
Until my estranged parent could come find me, that is.  
“I’m going to call her, yeah? I’ll be right back.”  
“If she doesn’t pick up, try Purgatory’s sheriff’s office. My aunt was friends with the sheriff,” I told him, as he walked away.  
He acknowledged me with an incline of his head. I shoved my hands under my thighs and studied the files stamped with ‘confidential’ and random dates and names on his desk until he came back.  
“You were right, she didn’t pick up, but I called the Sheriff’s office. They told me they did know Gus, and they’ll call back pretty soon once they’ve got ahold of one of the Earps.”  
“Was it Sheriff Nedley?” I asked, dully.  
His brow creased. “No. Sheriff Haught.”  
I didn’t know a Sheriff Haught, but it made sense that Nedley might have retired. From what I heard, Purgatory wasn’t an easy town to manage, though that was about all I knew about my birthplace.  
He sat back down, telling me to entertain myself while we waited. I alternated between scrolling through my Instagram feed, and people-watching the flurry of the station. Officer Hartnett seemed to be one of the younger ones. He had hazel eyes, long brown hair, a straight nose, high cheekbones and muscular arms through his navy uniform, the fabric stretched over his broad back. Even sitting, all of his equipment was still attached to him, though he barely noticed. People wearing handcuffs were shoved into the hallway beyond, radios crackled, men debated and drank coffee in the break area.  
I had been sitting on the now-warm plastic chair near Officer Hartnett for over half an hour when a woman wearing an ID badge called his name, and he looked up from his work and gave me a sad smile before he went to go deal with it.  
A minute later, he waved me over from the other side of the room. Weaving between the desks and people, I stopped beside him and winced as he handed me the phone.  
“It’s…I’m not sure who it is. One of the Earps, Sheriff said,” Hartnett told me.  
I placed it against my ear, my ribs a cage and my heart a frightened bird. My blood. Whoever was on the other end was my blood.  
“Alice?” breathed the woman, her voice glass-bright and just as easy to break.  
“Hi?” I replied.  
“I’m—my name is Waverly. Did Gus tell you about me? I’m your aunt. Wynonna’s younger sister.”  
Gus had—Waverly, beautiful and wonderful, who loved her sister enough to send me away, even though it hurt her.  
I might have known more about her than my mother.  
“Yeah, she did. She did. Hi,” I managed to shudder out.  
“I’m...so happy to—talk to you. Even if…well. I am.”  
A sharp intake of breath from my aunt. I realised she was just as nervous as me, then.  
“Listen, Wynonna…She can’t come get you, not in person. She can’t leave Purgatory. Not yet, anyway. But we can’t leave you by yourself, so I’m coming to get you. Would that be okay?”  
I could focus on what was in front of me. I could make choices that made me safe and secure as quickly as possible. Saying yes to my aunt would do that.  
“Yeah. That’s fine,” I assured her.  
Her sigh was relieved. “Okay, well. It’ll take me a couple of days, but I’ll come as soon as possible. I’ve given the officer my number, and Sheriff Haught’s. If you need anything, call, and if I don’t answer try the sheriff. She’s usually got a direct line to me or Wynonna.”  
“Okay. Thank you,” I replied, twisting the line of the phone in my sweaty hands.  
“I’ll see you in a couple of days, okay?”  
When she received my okay, she hung up.  
Releasing a breath, I offered it to the cop, and he smiled encouragingly as he took it back.  
“Here are the numbers she gave me. I’m going to take you to that friend’s house now, okay?” he said, handing me a scrap of paper.  
At my nod, he took me back out to his cruiser, and he drove me home, and then to Logan’s place. He knocked on the door, and explained everything to Aubrey, who nodded and grimaced at my plight and was oh-so-kind as I stood there awkwardly.  
When the cop turned to leave, I tugged on his sleeve to stop him. “Thank you,” I said.  
Smiling again, he inclined his head, and left, and I was ushered inside and sat at the table. Logan wasn’t home yet—wouldn’t be for another few hours.  
“So, your aunt is coming to get you?”  
“Yeah…the non-great one. I’ve never met her,” I replied, tiredly.  
“Really? Not once?” Aubrey’s voice was patient.  
“She lives with my mother.”  
“The one you’ve also never met.”  
Nodding, I watched her move around the kitchen, collecting ingredients and utensils.  
“I’m going to need help packing up my things and shipping them, I think. I mean, my aunt didn’t say it, but…”  
“We’ll help you, no big deal,” she smiled, once.  
I let her make lunch, while I went and made up my own bed in the guest room. I’d stayed here enough that I knew the drill, and I didn’t want Logan to be a witness to my grief tonight, when I thought it might finally hit me. It was weird that it hadn’t. I had to feel something, right?  
It didn’t, even in the latest, quietest, heaviest hours of the night, when even Logan had gone to sleep. I just kept going back to my aunt’s voice—the way she sounded. How, in a few days, I would see her, know her. 

*********

Soon after I hopped into the taxi, I fell asleep, despite the shortness of the drive. Just before I was completely out, I felt Waverly’s fingers in my hair, stroking it away from my temple.  
Maybe I felt safe for a second, though I wouldn’t ever admit it to her.  
When I woke up, my aunt was shaking me. “Come on, Ally. Gotta plane to catch.”  
Blearily, I stumbled out of the car and she immediately handed me my small bag. The rest of my stuff had already been shipped, courtesy of Logan and Aubrey’s help. She lead me through the airport, her pace brisk, and I half-heartedly gave my things to the customs guys and let the bomb guy pass their scanner over me.  
We sat in the terminal for half an hour before our gate opened, and Waverly’s encouraging smile was the only thing pulling me onto the plane behind her—the plane to my birthplace and my estranged mother.  
I listened to music the whole flight, dozing in and out of full consciousness while my aunt read some history book, which made my head spin when I read a few lines of the dense paragraphs.  
At times, I felt her eyes on me, scanning, lingering on the curve of my mouth and jaw and eyebrows. As if she could see her older sister printed all over me, a carbon copy, paler version of the sibling she loved.  
Four hours in, I ripped out my headphones, catching her glancing away from me and back to her book.  
“Do I look like her?” I asked, softly.  
A slow, sure nod. “You look like both of them. But…mostly her.”  
“You know who my father is?” I said.  
“His name is John Henry. And he’s a little hard to explain, everything is, really. But…I promise we can try.”  
No apology, yet. But I didn’t blame my aunt, especially since she had finally given me a name. I didn’t know if I blamed my mother.  
“You won’t explain now?” I asked, reproachfully.  
A slight head shake. “No. You wouldn’t believe me.”  
Incredulously, I shook my own head and slotted my earphones back in, switching it over to a thumpier song, studying my aunt under my eyelashes. The remaining two hours, she resolutely focussed on her book. I wasn’t sure if I was impressed or not.  
When we touched down, Waverly’s phone blinked with incoming messages, and she smiled stupidly at a couple of them, thinking I wasn’t paying attention. Wondering who she was talking to when she texted back, still grinning secretly, occupied my mind as we hurried through the small airport.  
She retrieved her car from the parking lot—to my disbelief, it was a small red jeep—and I climbed into it, my throat tight.  
“How long is the drive?” I asked, stuffing my bag under my feet.  
“Couple hours,” Waverly replied absently as she scanned the road.  
I shoved down my pulse and the lurch of my stomach, vowing that I wouldn’t give an inch—not to my fear, and not to my new normal.  
Waverly hummed along to the low volume of the radio, gently tapping the steering wheel with her thumbs nearly the whole first hour.  
At the start of the second, I sat up straight, suddenly realising something.  
“Why don’t I look anything like you?” I asked, even pausing my song to listen to the answer.  
“I was wondering when you’d notice,” Waverly said, pressing her lips together in amusement or resignation, I couldn’t tell.  
I just waited—a trick Logan had taught me: if you waited, they’d give you the answer, even if they didn’t want to. He’d used it on me a few too many times at the start of our friendship.  
“I’m not an Earp. Not technically. Mama had an affair with a man named Julian before she disappeared. I look like them, not Dad,” she explained.  
Interesting. And I already thought my family was messed up—I supposed it would just get more twisted the deeper I delved into it.  
“Anything else fun I can expect?” I quipped, rubbing my palms on my jeans.  
It left a slightly damp imprint on my thighs.  
“Oh, yeah. That’s not really the fun part. Like at all. Can you just hold your questions until we see Wynonna? She’ll be upset if you find this stuff out the wrong way,” Waverly affirmed.  
“Sure,” I agreed.  
Wouldn’t want to upset Wynonna, would we now?  
I stayed quiet the rest of the journey, other than questions about where we were. Eventually, we pulled into a relatively empty town with a wide main road, lined with fairly plain shops and bars. Waverly stopped her jeep outside a blank building, withdrawing her keys and opening her door.  
“You can chill here, or you can come in. Up to you,” she offered, one foot on the pavement parallel to the car.  
“Where are we?” I questioned.  
“Sheriff station. Wynonna works here, but she’s out right now,” my aunt answered.  
Her expression was careful. So maybe my nerves hadn’t been subtle, but she was giving me an out.  
I didn’t want to sit in the car in case someone walked by, so I slid out on stiff legs and followed her into the station.  
The place was tidy, but obviously old—from the nicks in the wood of the counter and the general smallness of the offices. There were ancient photos on the walls, framed and all, and organised, metal filing cabinets and stacks of files on each of the desks.  
At one of them sat a woman, red hair cropped to her chin, frowning and tapping her pen on an open file, long legs tucked under the desk somewhat uncomfortably, wearing a dark cop’s uniform.  
“Nicole,” Waverly said, just loud enough for her to hear.  
Startling, the cop looked up. Instantaneously, her face split into a joyous, dimpled smile.  
“You’re back,” the cop laughed, shoving herself to her feet and beelining for my aunt.  
When she saw me, she stopped just before reaching the counter.  
“Are you—Is that?” the cop stammered, looking from me to Waverly.  
How she knew who I was was a total mystery to me, one I turned to my aunt to solve, my mouth opening in surprise.  
“Nicole, this is Ally, and Ally, this is Nicole Haught, Sheriff of Purgatory and…my wife,” Waverly introduced us.  
My eyes widened even further, and every other thought flew out of my head.  
“Why didn’t you say anything?” I spluttered. “No one ever said you were married!”  
“You didn’t ask?” Waverly shrugged.  
Opening the barrier that separated the office from people coming through, she practically bounded through it and drew the Sheriff’s jaw down to her, kissing her quickly and fiercely. When my aunt pulled away her expression was sheepish, but she was still beaming, barely able to tear her gaze away from her wife’s to meet mine. The sheriff was struggling just as much, wide eyes fixed on my aunt’s face.  
Nicole arm-wrapped Waverly’s waist so she couldn’t move, and then said, “Welcome to Purgatory.”  
“Thanks, I think,” I accepted.  
Awkwardly, we stood for a second until Waverly shifted nervously, saying, “Sweetie, I love you but I have to go. I’ll call you later.”  
Nicole claimed another kiss from Waverly before she released her, expression regretful but still soft. With a last glance back, Waverly tugged me from the station.  
As soon as I had my seatbelt on, I turned to her. “How long have you been married?”  
My aunt shrugged. “We’ve been together seventeen years, but married for fourteen.”  
They seemed like they still weren’t out of their honeymoon phase. How could someone still be that in love after seventeen years?  
“I was working at Shorty’s—the bar here, and she walked in with her Stetson and all her gay swagger and I was a total goner,” she said, her tone fond and mellow.  
“Gross,” I grinned back.

*********

Waverly handed me the heavy mug a second before I heard the creak of the front door opening. Immediately, I was setting it down and forcing myself to keep my shoulders from bowing inward as I listened to whoever it was hang up their coat. Foolish, facing away from the front door, so they could see me before I saw them.  
“Waverly?” called the newcomer, voice low and weary.  
“In here,” Waverly trilled back.  
I twisted in my seat in time to witness Wynonna Earp stepping across the threshold of the kitchen.  
It was like looking in a mirror: an older, grimmer portrait of myself. She had the same grey eyes, the same cascading mane of dark hair, the same narrow, pretty face.  
She wore skin-tight leather pants, and a red long sleeve that showed a large strip of her stomach. Hanging low on her hips was a wide leather belt, holstering a long, old-timey gun to her thigh, the span of it holding dozens of bullets.  
She stopped dead when she saw me, eyes sweeping from my eyes to my feet.  
“Alice,” my mother breathed, standing motionless except for the bobbing of her throat.  
“Hi,” I whispered, wishing away the strange hoarseness of my voice.  
Waverly stood frozen, looking between us in equal parts horror and awe.  
My mother finally moved, striding over to the opposite side of the table and sitting down clumsily. Her sister’s fingers gripped her shoulders.  
“I’m sorry,” Wynonna murmured, her voice strangled.  
She stopped. Swallowed. Tried again.  
“I never meant for it to take this long. I meant to bring you back sooner, before you got too old. I’m sorry,” Wynonna said.  
From the shocked expression on Waverly’s face, she had not expected her to say anything like that. I wondered if my mother had ever apologised for anything in her life.  
Gingerly, I nodded, not trusting myself to speak, not sure what I would even say.  
“I’m sorry about Gus,” Wynonna continued.  
Sucking in a breath, I said, “thank you.”  
I knew Gus was their aunt too, and Waverly cringed, eyes fluttering closed as Wynonna leaned back into her. Now I knew which of them had been closer with her.  
I didn’t want to expose my desperation, but the words oozed out of me like the pus they were—infected and sore since I was old enough to understand them.  
“Why did you send me away?” I asked, satisfied with how steady they came out.  
Wynonna was shaking.  
“You won’t believe it at first,” Waverly said. “But live here awhile, and you’ll see.”  
I nodded, resisting the urge to raise my eyebrow.  
What they didn’t know is that I’d believe anything, if it sealed the gaps in my knowledge, soothed the aching absence of them in my life, gave me the reason to why I had been rejected and separated from them since birth.  
I waited for Wynonna to take a breath, and for Waverly to sit down beside her heavily.  
“Our family—the Earps—we’re cursed. We have been since Wyatt Earp in the Old West. We’ve lived the same cycle for generations: seventy-seven outlaws murdered by our great great great grandfather, resurrected over and over, and the heir of each generation forced to hunt them down every time.”  
I stilled, locking my gaze on my mother, on her words. There was no way. No way.  
“I—we—sent you as far from Purgatory as we could. So you could have it better than me, so you could be safe. And maybe, if I was lucky, I could have broken the curse in time. But it took longer than I thought it would.”  
“You’re lying,” I said flatly.  
“I’m not,” Wynonna replied, shaking her head.  
“You don’t have to believe us now, Ally. But you will,” Waverly assured me.  
I watched my mother compose herself, her sister encircling one of her wrists with her hand, and I thought maybe it might be true. Why else would a mother send their child away? What could be so terrible she couldn’t raise it herself?  
“Okay,” I finally said.  
A sharp, accepting nod from Wynonna.  
There was a silence, in which I sipped my tea and Wynonna rested her forehead against Waverly’s.  
“What about my father?” I asked.  
Desperately, Waverly gave me a warning look, eyes widening and pressing her lips together.  
“He’s…around. But he’s banned from the homestead and you can’t see him until I’ve figured out whether he’s stable enough to handle it,” Wynonna replied, frowning.  
“Okay, well. Who is he then?” I said.  
“His name is John Henry Holliday, or Doc. You might know him,” Wynonna grinned, almost self-deprecatingly.  
I had heard of him. Jesus Christ. I hadn’t been wrong about my family, and I had feeling we were barely scratching the surface—there were decades of history between these people. My father was the notorious Doc Holliday, boyfriend of Wyatt Earp.  
“Isn’t he dead?” I questioned, suddenly finding a flaw in the statement.  
“No. He was given immortality by a witch and left at the bottom of a well for a century,” Waverly replied.  
Immortal. My father was immortal.  
“This is insane,” I muttered.  
A laugh from my aunt, a ringing sound I had a feeling she gave freely and often.  
Shrugging, Wynonna stood. “It gets less insane the longer you live it.”  
She drifted into the next room, out of sight. Her sister made to stop her, opening her mouth to say something, before reconsidering.  
My mother returned holding a half-empty bottle of whiskey, uncapping it as she sat back down.  
“Wynonna—” Waverly murmured.  
Shaking her head, Wynonna waved her off. I watched as she swigged deeply from it and wiped her mouth, sighing.  
After a while of quiet contemplation—the only sounds coming from Wynonna slowly drinking the entirety of the bottle and Waverly shifting restlessly in her seat—my aunt stood and positioned a pot on the stove.  
“Nonna, I’m making dinner, Nicole’s coming over, and then I’m putting you all to bed,” she proclaimed.  
“Sounds good baby girl,” Wynonna replied quietly.  
I managed to stop myself starting at the nickname given to a younger sister by the older. Sweet, but surprising.  
Soon after Waverly had something simmering on the stove, the door squeaked again and I turned to see the Sheriff, now wearing jeans and a thick sweater, standing in the kitchen behind me.  
“Hello again,” she greeted me, dodging the dining table.  
“Red, I took care of that situation over near the Blake place. Told them it was coyotes after,” Wynonna said, still staring into her amber liquid.  
“Thank you,” Nicole said.  
She reached Waverly at the stove and enveloped her in a hug, kissing her cheek. “Hi baby.”  
Wynonna made a disgusted noise while I smiled secretly to myself.  
Leaning back into her wife, Waverly sighed and grinned. “Help me with this, would you?”  
Nicole obliged by putting whatever was in the pot into bowls and giving it to us both before sitting next to Wynonna across from me. It wasn’t half-bad, and I ate it gratefully as both my mother and the Sheriff wolfed it down.  
“Jeez, what’s got you guys so hungry?” Waverly asked incredulously.  
“Didn’t have lunch, there was a barfight over at Pussy Willows, and then I had to do mop up for it,” Nicole replied.  
“Shit,” Waverly said. “The Revenants?”  
“Nah, they just wanted me to do my job and get out,” her wife replied.  
I didn’t quite know what that meant, but I finished my food without dwelling too much on it. I stood to hand my bowl to Waverly, who was still leaning against the counter, studying us all sitting together like we were one of her books—complicated and layered and almost too hard to follow.  
I turned back to the table, catching Wynonna’s eyes on me before she swiftly glanced away. It was like what they told you about snakes: no matter how scared you were of them, they were twice as terrified as you were. My mother was frightened, and both Waverly and Nicole knew it, centring themselves around her like chess pieces around a king.  
“Wynonna, dishes please,” Waverly requested, stepping aside, her half-full bowl still nestled in her hands.  
With a slight shudder, my mother stood, and started collecting the things her sister had dirtied and stacking them in the sink. Waverly and Nicole exchanged glances, and Nicole leaned across the section of floor between the table and the counter, gently pulling the whiskey bottle from Wynonna’s fingertips. My mother, to her credit, relinquished it easily, as if she’d expected it.  
When Wynonna finished her chore, Waverly ushered her out of the room and presumably to bed while Nicole watched over me with lion’s eyes. I pretended not to notice, which was easy, because her gaze wasn’t probing or threatening—merely gentle and steady.  
Waverly returned, and she said to me, “We didn’t really have time to move the whole house around, so you’ve got a stretcher in the living room until we can sort it out. Is that okay?”  
I nodded, and something in my aunt relaxed.  
“We can stay up with you,” offered Nicole, as her wife rubbed her thumbs over her shoulders.  
“No, it’s okay. I’m tired anyway,” I refused, managing a small smile.  
“Really? Because you slept most of the day,” Waverly said.  
“State of being, I guess. Helps pass the time,” I replied.  
“Okay, if you’re sure.”  
I was, so she escorted me into the living room, through which was a curtained-off bedroom where I could faintly see my mother curled up. Even in sleep she seemed unsettled, her restless energy permeating the room.  
My aunts bade me goodnight and went upstairs, and I could hear them walking around above me as they prepared for bed.  
For the next hour, I listened to my mother breathe, marvelling that I was here with her, after fantasising about her for years, imagining what she would be like. I couldn’t really base it on anything, because Gus said you could never understand or know her if you hadn’t met her. Despite it, she told me that she was fierce and didn’t give an inch, but that wasn’t all she was. She was complicated and flawed, and so very, very human.  
That’s what Gus had said, more than anything else. That she was so deeply human, and I shouldn’t forget it. Maybe I was only starting to get what that meant. I didn’t have time to puzzle it out further, though, before I heard the first gasp from upstairs.  
My aunts had waited a while—thinking an hour would be enough time for me to fall asleep—before they began. I hadn’t doubted for a moment that they would wait until the house was empty before Nicole welcomed Waverly home, I had just hoped it would be after I was unconscious. Waverly’s stifled moans drowned out the sounds of Wynonna’s breathing and I pulled my blanket over my head, staying in the dark until it dragged me under.  
~~~~  
Seeing her sleeping just beyond my doorway was a shock. In sleep, that watchful, razor-sharp gaze was hidden, and her nervous energy had dissipated.  
My daughter was anxious. Had been anxious. Because of me.  
I shoved out a harsh breath. She was here. That was all that mattered. I could start to build a relationship with her. I had meant to, as she grew older—but after a while of missing her and thinking about her and needing her with me, the thought of meeting her had become insurmountable. And maybe I was a coward, but I might have been glad I couldn’t leave the Ghost River Triangle. That my endlessly capable little sister had flown out to get her and deal with our aunt’s death.  
She was here. Just as perfect as the day she was born.  
I used to wish that the Revenants had given me a little longer, that the Widows hadn’t stopped us on the road, that I had stayed at the homestead—anything to give me a little more time with her. But she was here now, so none of that mattered anymore.  
Waverly found me, still spellbound like some kind of idiot in the living room, a robe over her pyjamas.  
“Wynonna?” she whispered, breaking my reverie.  
“Yeah, hi,” I hissed back, jerking stupidly as I shifted away from Alice and toward the kitchen.  
“Is Nicole still asleep?” I asked.  
“No. She’s got work soonish. I’m getting her tea. Want some?”  
“Sure.”  
Settling at the table to watch her make it, I forced myself not to glance behind myself in order to look at her again.  
“She’s gorgeous, right?” Waverly said, catching my struggle.  
Narrowing my brows, I nodded slowly. “I never thought…she’s so beautiful, Waves.”  
“Just like you,” my sister’s expression was melancholy as she touched her thumb to my jaw.  
I wanted to shove off the feeling that gave me, wanted to reach for the whiskey Nicole had left on the counter. As if sensing it, Waverly pulled away.  
“I know it’s hard, Wynonna. I’m here—now and forever,” she murmured.  
An old saying: one she’d used countless times since the very first outside the bathroom door as I stared at the positive pregnancy test. It gave me the same measure of comfort now as it did then, though the situation was slightly more terrifying. Slightly.  
“I know, baby girl,” I replied, managing a half-smile.  
She kissed my temple as she handed me my tea, then disappeared upstairs.  
I sat at the table, staring at the old wood and sipping from my mug until Alice woke and drifted into the kitchen, her eyes still unfocused.  
She paused when she saw me but sat down at the table anyway. I really really wanted that bottle now.  
“Morning,” she said, voice cracking.  
“Morning,” I replied, raising an eyebrow. “I usually skip breakfast, but I can make you oatmeal if you want.”  
Shaking her head, she rested her elbows on the table. I tried not to let the silence become awkward, to just sit with her and have it be okay.  
Of course, it didn’t last, because I said, “You’re named after his mother.”  
“Doc’s?” she questioned.  
“Yeah. Gus never knew who your father was. All this stuff—” I indicated the house, myself, “—she tried to pretend it didn’t exist, like everyone else.”  
“What, the curse?” her tone was sharp, sceptical.  
She still didn’t believe me. My whole life’s story was something to be questioned. I guess I deserved it, because I hadn’t been a good mother, hadn’t told her the history before she was too old to be disbelieving.  
“Yeah. I didn’t tell you yesterday. But the only person who can hunt down the outlaws—the Revenants—is the heir of the family, the oldest kid. I’ve been the heir since—since my older sister died, and I’ve been currency ever since then. You would have been too, if I’d kept you here.”  
I wanted her to understand how dangerous it was, how she could have been used and hurt just to get to me, to destroy the Earp line. How everything I did since the moment I found out I was pregnant, it was to make her safer.  
Alice paused, taking it in, before she replied, “I had another aunt?”  
I didn’t want to tell her this, didn’t want her to know that I had destroyed our family, caused Waverly so much pain and left a terrible legacy on my home and my name. But she wanted to know, and I would tell her.  
“Willa. She was daddy’s girl. When we were kids, she was taken by the Revenants. We found her again after…I came home.”  
“Where did you go?”  
“Greece. I wanted out of this place. Everyone hated me here. But I came back—you inherit the curse when you turn twenty-seven—I came back and immediately, I was it. Worst game of tag ever.”  
“So what about Willa?” her face was confused, not quite putting the pieces together.  
“Even though she wasn’t actually dead like we thought she was, I still became the Heir. When we found her…she wasn’t right. Classic Stockholm Syndrome for the Revenant who’d kept her captive. And when she tried to release the Revenants out of Purgatory, I shot her. She was going to die anyway, but I was the one who killed her.”  
Quietly, Alice slid her elbows off the table. Her burning, intense gaze focussed on me completely and I wanted to look away from the judgement she could inflict on me, but I didn’t.  
“Did you have another choice?” Alice asked, finally.  
Even now, I still thought that maybe I could have saved her. If I tried harder, shot Miction earlier. But I knew, after watching her step over the line, that even if I had she was irredeemable. I would have had to look over my shoulder for the rest of my life. She’d almost destroyed my home, and she’d shot Nicole. Waverly would die if anything happened to Nicole, and there was no contest. I would choose my baby girl every time.  
I looked right back at my daughter and I stated, “My only other choice was to let her die slowly and painfully.”  
Alice nodded carefully. “Then I think you made the right one.”  
I don’t know if I was relieved, but she knew some of it, and didn’t hate me, and that was good enough for now.  
I was saved from having to think of something else to say by Nicole appearing in the kitchen, gently placing her empty mug on the counter. Her hair was mussed at the back, and her cheeks were a little flushed. Waverly must have given her a goodbye make-out: I recognised the symptoms. Squeezing my wrist, she brushed some of my hair behind my ear and left through the front door, waving as she did so.  
“What was their wedding like?” Alice asked, to my amusement.  
“Disgustingly endearing. It wasn’t a big thing; they just wanted the vows and the rings. But I knew that was how it was going to end up. Haught is wife material.”  
“Really? You knew that straight away?” It was Alice’s turn to raise an eyebrow.  
“Not straight away,” I grimaced. “Haught didn’t know about all this…stuff when she signed up to be deputy sheriff. And I thought…when she found out about all of it, she’d run. Leave me to pick up the pieces of my sister. But she didn’t.”  
Alice stared up at the roof for a second, contemplative.  
“So, I was going to go see Doc today. Talk to him. I won’t if you don’t want me to, though,” I said, drawing her attention back to me.  
Cocking her head, Alice restlessly tapped her fingers on the table as she considered it.  
“I think I want to know more about him before I meet him. But you can talk to him. You said he’s banned from the homestead, right? So there’s no harm in him knowing I’m here,” Alice decided finally.  
“As long as you don’t leave, yeah. Because he could find you if you do,” I replied.  
“Is he some kind of bloodhound?” Alice quipped.  
Humourlessly, I laughed. “Something like that.”

********

I left my daughter with Waverly at the homestead to go find my baby-daddy. She wasn’t so much a baby anymore, but he was still her father, no matter how I felt about his choices.  
I checked Shorty’s first, but the Revenants there told me he had left. They offered to drink with me, and I had a few shots with them before moving on, heading to the Gardner house.  
Mercedes was happy to see me, and Kate just as cool as always when she opened the door for me.  
“Have you seen Doc?” I asked them both, as Mercedes handed me a glass of wine.  
“Not recently. Last time I saw him was maybe a week ago,” Kate told me.  
“I need him,” I said, ignoring Kate’s expression of disgust.  
“Has this got something to do with the long trip Waverly took until yesterday? Because girl, loop me in,” Mercedes said.  
Rubbing my face, I sighed. She’d find out soon enough—kid had to go to that godawful school.  
“My aunt living out of town just died. Waverly went to organise the funeral and the will and stuff.”  
“So why do you need Doc?” Mercedes prodded.  
“Gus was looking after my kid,” I said, sighing.  
“Oh my God, so she’s here—in Purgatory?” Mercedes was practically vibrating with the news.  
Rolling my eyes, I chugged my wine before I confirmed it.  
“And you need to find your jilted lover, so you can tell him. How nice,” Kate said, tapping long nails against her glass.  
Levelling her a hard stare, I stood up. “Thanks for the wine, but if you haven’t seen him, I’m gonna jet.”  
I was on the threshold of the house when Kate said, “Check the woods. He does a lot of wandering.”  
I didn’t bother to say thank you before I closed the door behind me and climbed into my truck.  
Fucking Kate. Shoving the truck into gear, I pulled it back onto the road and headed for the woods.

**Author's Note:**

> So, I probably won't be adding to this, it was just a little thing in my head that I wanted in words. It was fun to write, mostly. Thanks for reading :)


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